Review: False Witness by Karin Slaughter

Light spoilers to follow.

I’ve only read one other book by Karin Slaughter, and I loved it. It was tight, well-plotted, a little corny, but so much more than I expected. It sold me on Slaughter’s writing. I have a hard time reading more than one book by the same author in a row because everything gets muddled for me. So, I read a few more things after Pretty Girls, and then snagged this one from my library. Friends, False Witness is no Pretty Girls.

This book feels rushed. It came out pretty quickly after the conclusion of the Will Trent series (which I look forward to starting soon), and the events in the novel are firmly situated in 2021. (I see a lot of complaints about the book referencing covid a lot, which is totally batty to me because authors are just what…supposed to write in a vacuum devoid of any influence or reference point to the world they live in? Please grow up.) It reads like the year-end checking of boxes for a rapidly approaching contract deadline.

None of the three primary characters felt believable–I was unconvinced of Leigh’s cleverness and Callie’s selflessness(?). Most of all [the near caricature of evil that was our main villain. I mean, why is this guy written as some kind of criminal genius? He knows where everyone is, and he knows what they’re going to do next. It’s cliche at best. Disappointingly but predictably, Callie is (I think) supposed to be complex but comes across as more confused and inconsistent than anything else. All I’m saying is Callie has a lot of well-directed energy and highly-organized planning skills for someone who’s supposed to be strung out. 

Onto the good! Karin Slaughter writes violence, gore, and disturbing content that unnerves me just as well as nearly any extreme horror does. There were a couple of moments in False Witness that actually made me gasp. Why is this a feature, you may ask. I like violent shit, I guess. But I also know how difficult it is to write violence/r*pe/assault/etc. without it coming off as either 1) edgelordy, 2) cartoonish, or 3) pedestrian. Slaughter makes it look easy. (That’s a fun sentence to take out of context.) I wouldn’t say this was a fun read, per se, but it did move quickly, and the tension was built up perfectly for this to be a perfectly enjoyable* weekend read.

3/5 hidden cameras